The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Cincinnati's Desmond Ridder & Appreciating Great Defense

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

On this week's Breaking the Huddle, Joel Klatt talks to Cincinnati QB Desmond Ridder about the win over Notre Dame and attracting Heisman buzz. Joel also goes through his Top 10 Rankings, and breaks down tape of why Georgia, Iowa, and Penn State are dominating on defense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's going on, everybody? Welcome into the show this week. I'm Joel Clatt. This is Breaking the Huddle and it's brought to you by Dr. Pepper. It is the one fans deserve. Now, lots to get into today. My top 10, a huge breakdown of the top three defenses in the country. We've got Desmond Ritter, the quarterback of Cincinnati on deck and then we'll get to some clap back. Let's get into the top 10 though because we got to fly. That breakdown of the defenses is going to be lengthy. Here's my almost top 10 teams. The teams, the team's It just did not quite make it. Oklahoma State, huge win. Kentucky continuing to win. Oregon, obviously a huge tumble down after that loss to Stanford. Let's take a look, though, at my top 10 teams in the country. Start with BYU, then Michigan State, Mel Tucker, doing some great things. Michigan, huge win over Wisconsin. Ohio State looks to be finding their footing. Oklahoma got dropped down a little bit for me because Cincinnati had a huge win. Penn State, Iowa, Georgia, and Alabama. Now, I think those top two have kind of separated themselves out. look at this top 10 and try to digest it for just a moment. What do we see? We see two basically

group of five teams, Cincinnati, great chance to get in. By the way, huge, back to back, double digit wins on the road, Indiana and Notre Dame. They had an off week in between, but that team is doing great things. Top 10 scoring defense, their quarterback Desmond Ritter. This guy's putting himself in the Heisman Trophy conversation just with the fact that he's been great for so long. 30 and four is a starter, and we'll talk to him coming up later in the program. But the other big thing here is all this big 10. I mean, check it out. Five teams from the big 10, four of them from one division, the big 10 east. Now, here's what's going to happen, folks. If you're a fan of one of these teams, what's going to happen is they're either going to use the other in order to prop themselves up and potentially make a playoff run or they're going to eat themselves and they're going to just bury themselves by beating each other. Okay, now, Ohio State fans, if I'm looking at this, Ohio State has a great. great opportunity to overcome that early loss to Oregon and get back into that playoff conversation because of all these other ranked teams in their division. They're going to have a chance to

beat Michigan and Michigan State and Penn State. That's going to be amazing for them. But you can say the same argument for the other teams, Michigan, Michigan State or Penn State, they've got the opportunity and the bullets in the chamber as far as their schedule goes with the other teams in their division. That if they went out, they would certainly be a playoff team. And I think any team from the Big Ten East, if they only have one loss at the end of the year in conference, They're probably going to be a playoff team, in particular if they win the Big Ten. Now, having said all that, let's move out West because Iowa. How does Iowa fit into this?

Well, folks, Iowa has a great defense. We're going to break that down in a little bit. But they also have a much easier schedule moving forward than the other Big Ten teams because they're not in the east with everybody else. Hawkeye fans, this game this weekend is huge. It's monumental. If Iowa wins this weekend, there's not a big threat to them in the latter course of their schedule. Then they would be in the driver's seat for a playoff berth.

We're talking about, what was it? You know, 2015 all over again where they were in the Big Ten championship game as an undefeated. All they needed was a win over Michigan State in order to go to the college football playoff. I did that game. I remember that game like it was yesterday. Iowa is in a great position. They host Penn State and then that schedule moving forward. Not great.

Oklahoma, big red river rivalry weekend. They got to get past Texas. I think that's going to be very tough for them. So what do we take away from the top 10? The East, you're either going to eat yourself or you're going to boost yourself into the playoff. Iowa, this is basically their season this week against Penn State and Cincinnati.

Watch out, folks. Those bear cats are for real. They've got a legitimate chance to go to the playoff. And I think a lot of people in college football would be rooting for that. A little Cinderella, finally in our sport, crashing the big dance. The Dr. Pepper Tuition giveaway is back to enter for a chance to compete for up to $100,000 upload a TikTok using I-deserved tuition contest and the official sound sweet tuition to show why you deserve tuition.

Okay, we know that Georgia has been dominant on defense, like some of the best defense maybe that we've ever seen. But we also know that Iowa and Penn State matchup coming up this Saturday have been playing great on the defensive side. Here's where they're ranking right now in the college football world in terms of top scoring defenses. These are your top three, Georgia, Iowa, and Penn State, all giving up less than basically 12 points a game. Obviously, Georgia, ridiculous, 4.6. But here's the thing. They all play very distinctly different styles of defense. Okay, so there's more than one way to skin a cat here when you're talking about stopping the opponent. So how does that work? What styles of defense do they play? Well, let's take a look. dive into what we're actually seeing from these defenses. We'll start with Georgia. Georgia's

defense, listen, they went on defense with overwhelming dominant force and superior talent. Kind of a shock and awe mentality. And that's exactly what happened against Arkansas. That game was basically over before it started. Let's take a look at early in this game what Georgia was doing defensively to stop Arkansas. First of all, right here, you've got a third down early in the game, the first third down in the game, and just a win from the defensive tackle. So, So if we look at this even from the top view, you got a one-on-one matchup. It's a push-pull, and he's into the quarterback. Boom.

The sack the quarterback, you're next to your own goal line and it's over. There's the one-on-one right here. The quarterback's in the backfield. Boom. Push, pull, overwhelming dominant force and superior talent. He gets a sack early in the game. Now we move on, and this is still early in the game. You're down basically 14-0 at this point.

What is Arkansas doing? Well, I'm trying to run the football. They've got the numbers. It's seven for seven. block the defensive front, but can you? Overwhelming superior talent. Stuff the run without run ratios. Without run ratio. Again, you've got seven guys in the defensive box, seven guys up front for Arkansas. You're supposed to be able to run the ball into that look. It's supposed to be a dominant run team. They give the fake, boom. No chance. Absolutely no chance. And if you take a look

at what Georgia was able to do early in that football game, at one point, Arkansas had run three offensive plays, two penalties for negative five yards, and they were down 14-0, shock and awe. There was no chance that Arkansas was going to come back from that because you weren't going to get the ability to score a bunch of points against this Georgia defense, and like that, three offensive plays, the game was basically over, basically over. Dominant force, superior talent, shock and awe. Bam! It's like an atomic bomb goes off right away.

Arkansas was done. Didn't matter what was going to happen the rest of the game. They were never coming back from a 14-0 deficit in that game. So now let's take a look at how Iowa wins on defense, which is distinctly different

from the shock and awe and superior talent that Georgia uses. How does Iowa win on defense? They went on defense with steady discipline play that relies on effort and sound structure. They are suffocating. They don't mind.

if you gain a few yards here and there because eventually they feel like you're going to make a mistake. They're going to play the same defense over and over and over again. Rally to the football and then you will make a mistake eventually. It's suffocating like a bow of constrictor. They just wrap their arms around you and eventually they succeed. Let's take a look at the Maryland game and I'll show you exactly what was going on. Here's early in the game and here's the structure I'm talking about. It's called corner corner, corner safety and then you've got a half into the boundary. Okay. So they're going to give up some yardage on this play. Makes a nice read to a tag a viola. It makes a nice read. They get a completion. They try to rally up, miss tackle. Okay. Hey, look, it's a first down. Well, what are they going to do? Let's go to the next play now. What's the next play look like for Iowa? Same exact structure. You're going to have the quarter, quarter, half. And then what do we see? All right? Well, they're just going to flip this out. They think, okay, we're going to try to gain a few yards. Well, look at the hustle and the effort. Look at all these Iowa defenders. Okay, this is this is kind of the suffocating style I'm talking about. They're hustling. They're pursuing to the football. Gain a few yards. Now let's go to the next snap. What does the next snap look like?

Well, it's the same structure, quarter quarter half. They know what their job is. Now you're going to get a little flip out there. And what do you see again? Positive yards, but look at all the Iowa defenders. You're not giving up the first down. They're continuing to suffocate you. They're in the right spot the entire time. Well, what does that lead to later in the game? Let's go to the next clip and see what that leads to. half. Now let's look at the linebacker's technique in a straight dropback. He knows his job. So he's going to carry this vertical route with his eyes on the quarterback because he's in zone coverage. And as he gets depth, he's going to force a very tight window throw that gets tipped up and it's intercepted. They made a mistake. They forced a mistake. I want to go back to that play

because what we're going to see here is the tight window throw. The linebacker is forcing the quarterback to throw it over his head and yet short of the safety. It's called a layered throw. This is one of the toughest throws to make for a quarterback. He tries to fit it in. That's a mistake. The tip ball. Did you know that five of Iowa's 12 interceptions have come on tips? Why do they get tips?

Because all of their eyes are on the quarterback. That suffocating zone defense forces you to eventually make a mistake. So they don't win with overwhelming force and superior talent. It's sound structure. It's effort. It's discipline. And it's suffocating. That's how Iowa wins on defense.

Well, how is that different, Georgia, Iowa, from Penn State? How does Penn State win on defense? Well, it's very different. They win on defense with multiple looks, athleticism, and length. They've got some great players, clearly, right? Now, they've got a couple of transfers that have helped them on the defensive line, but their athleticism and length, the linebacker spot, and maybe more importantly, at the secondary spots, allows them to take chances up front,

allow for tight coverage, and then they force the quarterback to make decisions quicker than he wants to make them. Okay, so that's the multiple looks. It's confusing. It's confusing for the offensive line. It's confusing for the quarterback. And then they allow the athleticism and length to take control. Athletic and opportunistic. Let's take a look at the way Penn State wins on defense. Here is the Indiana game. They would eventually shut Indiana out. What do we got right here? Well, you're going to take advantage of that athleticism by playing man coverage. You've got man coverage with one safety in the middle of the field. But look at this blitz look. So you're going to get all sorts of twisting and slanting. And now here they come.

Michael Pinnock's going to try to throw this football short. He's got an athletic corner out here that is making a nice play. But the ball gets batted down at the line of scrimmage because he's got to make the decision quickly. And he's trying to get the ball out of his hands as quick as he possibly can. That's very difficult for a quarterback. Let's go to the next play now. The next play that we've got, and it's a similar look, right? No, it's not.

It's straight man across the board with no safety in the middle of the field. So now you're going to overwhelm the pass protection with more guys than they can block. And I understand a defensive tackle is going to drop out, but he initially comes in order to get the tackle to bite, the offensive line, and now you've got a free run at the quarterback. Now, even though the quarterback gets away, this is what's the beauty of this play, even though the quarterback gets away and it's not actually a sack, you're forcing him to play faster than he wants to play. he ends up not being able to make a tight window throw. Man to man, no safety, overwhelm the passing protection,

forced the quarterback to speed up his clock, make a decision before he wants to. He steps up in the pocket. Now he's trying to flip the ball out, and you've got tight coverage with athletic corners on that outside. Let's take a look at the next play for Penn State. Here's what we got. Same look at I was just talking about.

No safeties in the middle. You're going to get man coverage. But this offensive line does enough in protection to give Pennix the opportunity to throw the ball. But his clock is too fast. He makes the wrong choice. He's got to throw this under out, which is wide open. But he's been peppered by these multiple looks.

And he's like, I got to get this ball out of my hands. Again, no safety. You're going to have man-to-man coverage. You've got an overwhelming blitz coming from the Penn State defensive front. And he doesn't make the right read because it's constantly confusing. It's hard to slow down as a quarterback. And he makes the wrong read and throw it.

into a tight window man coverage. Folks, this is what's so good about Penn State. Now let's go back in time to the Wisconsin game. You're going to see kind of a similar deal where they're going to force a mistake from a quarterback. It looks like zero coverage, man coverage, no safeties. They're going to blitz these linebackers,

but they're going to drop defensive linemen out. What they're trying to get is they're trying to get the running back to come up and block the blitz. Why? So they can free up this safety to roam in the middle of the field. So it's very confusing. So sure enough, here's the run. Running back blocks. Now that man to fitter, he can slide over, cover the tight end and he gets a pick.

That was a fourth down pick, basically won the game for them against Wisconsin. So again, it's a confusing defense with multiple looks, and they're trying to get the quarterback to make mistakes, and they normally do. So you can win with suffocation, but you can also win with athleticism and opportunistic play. So now we've got these three defenses over here that are the top scoring defenses in the country. How do they win? Well, you win with overwhelming dominant force, superior talent. You win by suffocating the opponent for Iowa. This is a team that plays steady defense, sound defense. You can win with athleticism and length, multiple looks, being opportunistic and forcing tight windows. There's a lot of different ways to play great defense. These three defenses right now are playing the best in the country, but they're doing it in very different ways. Welcome back into the show, breaking the huddle with Joel Clatt. Now, please, to be joined by one of the best players in the country and a guy that's playing great football for a team that is making a push folks for that postseason, that college football playoff

birth. I'm talking about quarterback for the Cincinnati, Bearcats, Desmond Ritter. Desmond, what's going on, man? How are you today? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Hey, first and foremost, what a huge win that was for you guys last week, especially you guys have made no bones about it, and we've been talking about it a bunch. If a group A group of five team is going to get into the playoff. You desperately need those chances against the Power 5 teams, usually on the road, to go out there and prove yourselves.

You knew that was coming up on the schedule. How big of a win was that for you in your program, man? Oh, it was huge for us. Not only for our football team, but for the whole community. You know, we're not that far away from Notre Dame, so we got a lot of fans who might have some ties of Notre Dame. But, you know, it was really big just for us to get out there. to get out there and play the best ball we can and just put on not only for our team,

but for our city and community. I'm sure that it was hard during the course of the early part of the season, not to look at that game, going to Notre Dame, going to South Bend, knowing what it could mean for you guys in the grand scheme of things. How has Coach Fickle been able to focus you guys week in and week out and then the leadership, you as well, to try to get guys to focus on individual games and not look ahead to a team like Notre Dame. Yeah, no, you make a good point. You know, as soon as the season ended last year, you know, it was kind of talks of the IU game and the Notre Dame game. And then, you know,

we come through fall camp this season. And, you know, we were just focused on our first game against Miami of Ohio. That's a rivalry for us. And then, you know, every week after that, it's just preparing each and every week to go out and play our best and not look forward to the week after because, you know, you can't take anything for granted. So, So we know we're going to get every team's best and we need to play every game like it's our last and that's just kind of how we go about it. We don't try to look forward and we just try to stay in the moment. Well, and that's going to be more difficult as you move now down the stretch because let's face it, you look at that schedule and all of us look at that schedule at the beginning of the year.

And you see IU who was, you know, highly rated in the preseason. Now they've lost a few games. But you look at that IU game, Indiana on the road. You look at Notre Dame on the road. You look at Notre Dame on the road and basically, you know, kind of book in games. I know you guys had an off week in between. But now it seems like, all right, like this is real. I've always made the argument. You need a two-year runway for a group of five team to make a legitimate push to the playoff. And here you are. You had a great year last year. You've now beaten these two teams in the middle of your schedule. How do you stay focused and get your young players to stay focused now through the back into your schedule knowing that the chase is real for the bearcatch?

Yeah, you make a great point, but I think, you know, we're going at a conference play this week. And, you know, I don't think it matters what conference you're in, whether you're in the SEC or the American. Every conference game is going to be a four-quarter game. And, you know, I think we'll be able to not put that on show, but, you know, a lot of people are going to see that real quick, especially some of the young guys that, you know, it doesn't matter where you ranked, you know, nationally. Every team is going to come in and give you their best no matter who you play. So all these conference games are going to be four quarter games. You know, we're going to have to play till the end and give it our all. And I think it makes it a lot easier to kind of stay focused when, you know,

that every game is going to be a tough, nitty-gritty game. Hey, man, you're 30 and four as a starting quarterback. I probably don't need to tell you that that's probably the number that you're most proud of as a quarterback. And listen, you've got a lot of great numbers. There's no doubt. But you're also going to enter into a portion of the season that individually, guys like me are going to throw your name in the hat for the Heisman Trophy and maybe national awards. You know, has that sunk into you? And what's your reaction to that?

Yeah, I just hear it on social media. You know, there's not a lot of talk about that around, you know, the locker room or anything. But, you know, I'll just always tell the guys, you know, just go on and let's just play our game. Let's just play how we play. You know, everything else is just a bonus. He's going to take care of itself. So I always say it, and Coach Figggo always says that team success is going to build individual success. And I feel like I'm a prime example of that. You talk about, you know, making sure how this team gets to the college football playoffs is, you know, having a good record for the past couple seasons. And then obviously a good record this season.

And so I think just, you know, not only since I've been here for so long, but all the teammates, coaches that I've had throughout my entire career, you know, have kind of put me and my teammates in this position to be where we are. I'll tell you what, man, you've got a big fan in me. I love what you guys are doing. I think a lot of people throughout college football are Bearcat fans moving forward because we want to see you guys break down that wall. So keep preparing every single week.

Get those guys ready to go. You've got a couple of big challenges coming up. SMU is probably going to be ranked when you face them later in the year. But don't look ahead of some of those conference games before that. I appreciate your time, man, really. And best of luck the rest of the season. Yes, sir. Thank you for having me.

for a little clap back. Let's go. Social media. What you got for me? Connor says, Joel, don't be fooled by Sincet Desmond Reader's not a good quarterback. And we'll get crushed by any real Power 5 talent. Take advantage of a very weak Notre Dame team this year. But once the O line develops Indie will whoop them. Listen, I totally disagree. All right, Desmond Reader is a great quarterback. He's third and four as a starter. And they just took down a Notre Dame team that had a healthy winning streak at home and been to the playoff two of the last three years. You can't say that's not a legitimate Power 5 team, nor do they not have any talent. By the way, they've got a top 10 safety on their. team. Kyle Hamilton's probably going to be a top 10 pick in the NFL draft. So Connor, listen, Brozif, I know it. You got the fratboy glasses. You're on a lake or wherever you're at. You need to do some thinking. There's no doubt about it. Today's breaking the huddle has been brought to you by Dr. Pepper. Remember, it is the one fans deserve. Folks, have a great weekend of college football.